


Let Fate Devour All

by geckoholic



Series: Dig Deep In The Hole Where You Buried Your Soul [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-29
Updated: 2012-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 07:24:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Sam could find his way back to the grave blind, from anywhere.</em> - Season 4 AU, featuring a Dean who came back way more broken than in canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Fate Devour All

**Author's Note:**

> For the Writing Between the Lines challenge at Hoodie Time. The prompt by dollarformyname is highlighted in the fic, and the challenge was to write a fic around that snippet. 
> 
> Cocoaphonic worked with me on the first draft, and redbells beta'd the finished ficlet and gave me some great pointers. All remaining mistakes are mine. Also, many thanks to kelzies for the hand-holding, which is becoming sort of a regular thing. ;)
> 
> Title is from "Descending Upon Us" by Demon Hunter.

Sam has no idea how he knows it. He just does. 

Maybe he knows the same way Dean knew he had to go back to save him the day Jess burned, the same way they always find their way back to each other no matter what. But if he's honest with himself, Sam doesn't care about how or why or what exactly it means. He'd be more concerned if there hadn’t been something deep inside of him that noticed that Dean's soul had made it's way back topside. 

The feeling's just there out of the blue, in the pit of his stomach. It wakes him from his sleep and he doesn't question it for a second. He doesn't pack up or check out of the room or dress beyond the t-shirt and pair of jeans he fell asleep in. He just gets up, gets in the car, and drives. 

***

Sam could find his way back to the grave blind, from anywhere. He doesn't have to check if he's heading the right way, not once, just stops to fill up the Impala because he was hunting a poltergeist a few states over. He drives for a day and a night and half of another day, and then he's there. 

Dean's made it out of the grave, but not much further. He's lying there on the ground, curled in on himself, naked and reeking of sulfur, bloody all over even though Sam can't make out at first sight whether he's injured or not. And aside from the rising and falling of his chest as he breathes, he's not moving. He must've lost consciousness after he dug himself out, Sam thinks. That's understandable, he'll wake up.

But when he crouches down and his eyes find his brother's face, Dean's eyes are open. Sam touches his jaw, a brief, light touch to prompt him to look up at him, but Dean's complete lack of reaction makes him withdraw his hand as if he touched something toxic. This isn't right. He doesn't know if he expected Dean to flinch at the contact or his breathing to speed up, or for him to outright jump to his feet, but he didn't expect...this. Nothing. 

Sam reaches out again, going for Dean's shoulder this time. He squeezes it. 

He doesn't get a reaction from that, either, and there's a hollow feeling taking hold of Sam's insides, threatening to drown him. The feeling is familiar; it's the same pure, crippling panic that he felt as he watched Dean being ripped apart in front of him in a kitchen in Indiana, all those months ago.

He whisper's Dean's name, in a small, quiet voice that doesn't sound like his own; when he gets no reaction he says it again, louder, yells it, but there's nothing. No response, no sign that Dean recognizes him or even registers his presence - he just stares ahead, unfocused and empty. 

Sam gathers him up, brings him into a standing position, and Dean's as pliant and unstable as a rag doll. If Sam let go of his brother now, he's sure that Dean would just fall back down onto the ground and stay there, like a lost, forgotten toy. Seconds, maybe minutes trickle by while Sam just stands like that, with his big brother's arm draped around his shoulder to hold him up. He's forgotten how to move.

The warmth of Dean's body seeps through Sam's t-shirt and into his skin, his breath puffing against Sam's neck because of the awkward angle at which Dean's head is resting on Sam's shoulder. Sam clutches at his brother's face with his free hand, pressing it into the crease of his neck; if he doesn't, he's sure that Dean's head is going to slip, just loll down toward his chest, and that would be too much. He's got more than enough trouble dealing with this ghost, this shadow of Dean, but something that suggests he's lifeless too, much like the body he carried to this grave? It would make Sam loose what's left of his mind.

He's standing there, losing track of time while trying his hardest not to scream or cry or both, and he doesn't know what to do. 

***

Dean's back, but he's not. For reasons Sam can't put into words, he didn't get them to Bobby. It's probably about protecting Dean's dignity, letting no one else witness him in this state. About intimacy, hope and a million other things. 

He drives back to the motel room he abandoned instead, two days during which he lets himself pretend that Dean was out injured in the backseat, hungover, sick, asleep, anything but facing the reality. The possibility that Dean won't get better, that this isn't temporary, that this is going to be Sam's new normal. 

Facing that hell spit out his brother, but kept the most important parts. 

Once there, he helps Dean inside. It's late at night, but Sam doesn't care - he's grateful for the dark surrounding them, the way it shields them from view. The pair of them, Dean naked and Sam in his ratty clothes and both of them bloody, would wave all kinds of red flags in the light of day. 

Dean still doesn't react at all, doesn't talk, just follows wherever Sam leads him. He sits down on the bed when Sam pushes him, and Sam allows himself to escape into the bathroom and finally cry. 

For long, endless months, Sam didn't want anything but to get his brother back. He ate, slept and hunted - he existed - without him, but he'd stopped living the day hellhounds dragged Dean away and left Sam with a corpse. And now that corpse has come back to life, but Dean's not in there and Sam's not sure whether he's supposed to be glad to have that much or scream at the unfairness of it all. 

Probably hell's version of a practical joke. 

Eventually, Sam pulls himself together enough to step out of the bathroom, pick Dean up from where he left him on the bed and guides him into the shower. It's a little complicated to have Dean understand that the shower stall is where Sam wants him, but they manage after a few tries. 

Sam strips his own t-shirt, picks up a washcloth from the stack the motel laid out, turns the water on and begins to wash the blood off his brother’s body. As he does, Dean gets a little more responsive, fidgety, attempting to bat Sam's hand away and flinching at the contact every time Sam does touch him. 

When Sam looks up to wash Dean's face, he sees that Dean's eyes aren't empty anymore: They’re filled with fear. 

Panic. 

Terror. 

And then he screams. 

***

It gets better after the first week, if only by a little, and Sam still doesn't know what exactly is happening or how to deal with any of it, let alone how to fix it. He barely stops to think about how Dean made it back topside, too busy dealing with what's right in front of him to bother with figuring out who or what disentangled Dean from hell's claws and dropped him in Sam's lap. 

At night, he lies awake and listens to Dean whispering and whimpering in his sleep. He’s got no illusions about the content of Dean's dreams, and yet he can't bring himself to wake him up. He needs these few hours of almost-silence, to catch his breath and steel himself for another day spent with the cruel mockery of everything he wanted. 

_There are times when Sam wants nothing more than to dig out his own holes and drop this broken version of his brother inside. When Dean is unblinking and flat on the floor, or smashing himself against the walls and garbling out sounds because he can't remember the words, Sam aches to run and scream and burn, dust in his eyes and bugs in his teeth and no strings dragging along behind him._

But he never does, because there are other times. Times when Dean is obnoxious and bright and whole. Sam needs to be there to catch those moments, figure out how to trap his brother in one of them. So he drives from somewhere to nowhere, another town and another motel every few days, restless and aimless but afraid to stop moving. 

Somehow, his mind has decided that not moving, ceasing to run, means acceptance. 

And he can't accept this. He won't. He's going to get his brother back, all of him.


End file.
